YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: A Southern Colonial-style residence set behind gates at the head of a boxwood bordered circular drive on a prime block in the casually ritzy, exceedingly desirable and unquestionably expensive Brentwood Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, long-owned by late and prolific film and television actress Patricia Barry, has come available with an asking price of $10.495 million. Miz Barry, who passed in the fall of 2016 at 93, was a small and big screen regular who frequently appeared opposite A-list leading men such as Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson, Glenn Ford and Alec Guinness. She was also founding member and a past president of the Women in Film non-profit organization, which honored her with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999

According to listing agent Paul Czako at Gussman Czako Estates, shortly after Miz Barry acquired the property in 1968 for what in what nowadays seems like an inconceivably low $117,000, she transformed the front façade from an ordinary, circa 1930’s clapboard-clad Colonial to a more stately Southern Colonial with the addition of a grandiose double-height portico held aloft by half of a dozen supermodel slender columns. Well maintained but in need of a spruce up, the existing residence measures in at 4,326–square-feet with four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms plus a staff bedroom and bathroom discretely tucked into the service wing on the ground floor. A classic center hall foyer with satisfyingly soignée black and white marble checkerboard floor leads to ample formal living and dining rooms, the former with fireplace the latter with hardwood floors. There’s also a galley-style kitchen with cherry wood cabinets, a breakfast room, a study with corner fireplace, a brick-floored sunroom, and a wood-paneled bar room. The rear of the residence opens to a broad red brick terrace that steps down to a deep sweep of lawn lined with mature trees and anchored at the far end by a well-placed jacaranda tree and a swimming pool surrounded by red brick terracing.

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At one time Miz Barry owned numerous noteworthy homes in some of L.A.’s plumier locales that she leased as fully furnished residences to visiting entertainment industry luminaries and her Brentwood home was, according to Czako, leased at various times to Paul Newman, Peter Gallagher and Don Rickles. Brentwood Park, a convenient and leafy refuge in the middle of Los Angeles, has long attracted high profile residents and some of the nearby homes and estates are owned by deep-pocketed business leaders, pro athletes and showbiz movers and shakers such as Bob Iger, Rob Reiner, Rick Caruso, Eli Broad, LeBron James, Trey Parker and Tobey Maguire.